A note on the Amazon ads: I've chosen to display current events titles in the Amazon box. Unfortunately, Amazon appears to promote a disproportionate number of angry-left books. I have no power over it at this time. Rest assured, I'm still a conservative.

Monday, November 22, 2004

Church and state: I didn't approve of judge Roy Moore's move to put a Ten Commandments monument in an Alabama courthouse -- he was just trying to pick a fight. However, the repeated lawsuits by bitter, disgruntled atheists to remove anything that anyone could consider Christian from the public square is just as bad. Unfortunately, while Judge Moore gets (rightly) slapped down, judge after judge rules that anything that has the slightest smell of Christianity to it must be removed from public view. The idea of freedom of religion has been warped into freedom from religion.

So, it was a pleasant surprise to see that Congressmen Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Duncan Hunter had slipped a measure into a huge omnibus appropriations bill that would make the Mt. Soledad cross -- which has been the subject of litigation for more than a decade -- a national veterans memorial.

I have no idea what impact this will have on all of the legal battles surrounding the cross, but if it throws another wrench into it I'm all for it. The move also brought out normally low-key atheist whose lawsuit started the whole thing, in what the San Diego Union-Tribune described as "his first public remarks in years."

"Jihad Jesus Republicans need to understand that the separation of church and state has kept this country from getting into religious wars," (Philip) Paulson said. " ... If God was powerful, there would not be a need for the government to go in and force a religious agenda on nonbelieving citizens."

Ladies and gentlemen, Paulson is an idiot. To Paulson, a cross up on a hill is forcing a "religious agenda on nonbelieving citizens." Get a grip. Paulson has obviously never heard about the Taliban -- what they did was "forcing" a religious agenda. And let's just disabuse Paulson that "separation of church and state" was what prevented this nation from getting into religious wars. America didn't get into religious wars because early Americans were concerned about freedom of religion -- for everyone. We didn't get into religious wars because every Christian denomination, along with Jews, Buddhists, etc., took a live-and-let-live attitude.

However, now we've got militant atheists like Paulson who want all religious expression -- whether it's a cross on a hill or a creche on the lawn at city hall or some politician saying that Jesus is his favorite philosopher -- removed from the public square.